If Iceland had any opening-night jitters before the first World Cup game in its history, its players did a pretty good job of hiding them Saturday, with the smallest country ever to qualify for the tournament holding fifth-ranked Argentina, a country that has won it twice, to a 1-1 draw.

Sergio Aguero scored for Argentina and Alfred Finnbogason countered for Iceland minutes later. But the story of the game was Iceland’s gutty resilience to withstand 90 minutes of relentless pressure.

How good was Iceland? Its defense was bent, bent and bent some more, but it never broke. Iceland even stopped Lionel Messi, something few teams have managed, with goalkeeper Hannes Halldorsson diving to his right to stop a low penalty shot in the 64th minute that would have won the game.

Then in the 79th minute, with Messi making a run at the near post, Iceland’s Birkir Saevarsson reached out and took the ball off his foot and nudged it over the end line.

The WC isn't getting much interest, at least with the American English-speaking audience in the U.S. with the Nats out of it, but thankfully I've got you to talk to, TFG. OTOH, I'm in Mexico where that's the only conversational topic. So far there are an extraordinary number of penalties, while the favorite for the Golden Boot seems to be an unlucky player by the name of OwnGoal. Haven't seen all the games, but you think defenders are making that many egregious errors?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ More votes equals a loss.... revolution!! The Electoral College is a disaster to Democracy. The whole world is laughing at us! donald trump

Barely a third of the way through the first round. In twenty WCs, all the way to the beginning, there have been a total of 41 OGs, although I don't know the count for each Cup, it's an average of 2. I suspect 2018 is on pace to shatter whatever the record might be.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ More votes equals a loss.... revolution!! The Electoral College is a disaster to Democracy. The whole world is laughing at us! donald trump

In just the third round of group stage matches, Own Goal tied his previous record of six goals in a World Cup, and with plenty of games remaining, seems set to eclipse that mark. The only somewhat surprising thing is that it took Own Goal this long — after a blinding start, including four goals in just the first few days of the tournament, Own Goal has slightly slowed down, but got back on the scoresheet on Monday.

Yes, for the purposes of this blog, Own Goal is a person. I like to imagine that when he was born he was supposed to be named Owen Goal but they misspelled his name on the birth certificate and he had some pretty chill parents who just decided to roll with it. He’s into post-punk music (huge fan of Joy Division) and loves Eritrean food. He has a younger brother, Tim Goal, but they don’t keep in touch as much as they should.